False Reports

Newspaper reporters who had to meet deadlines scrambled for news, any news, of the Titanic so they could file their reports in time for the next edition of their newspaper.  

Deadline - the absolute latest that a story can be filed at the newspaper office before it is sent to the printing department for publishing.  Generally this is about three hours before the newspapers hit the streets.

In the case of Titanic, that schedule was thrown out the window, especially for the big 'dailies' in large cities because their printing departments were cranking out edition after edition with updates as fast as they came in.  Their time from filing the story to printing to street vendor was less than two hours.

To make sure a newspaper had a story to print, so other newspapers didn't beat them to the punch with a story, there were some reporters who kind of made it up as they went along. They filed false reports.  The worst was when they guessed - badly. They either gave large numbers of survivors or large numbers of dead.

This, in turn, gave not only false information to families who were waiting to hear that their loved ones were safe and sound, but it also gave them false hope.

The first editions of Canadian newspapers reported "No Lives Lost," as seen in this Vancouver Daily Province newspaper.

Initial reports said that no lives lost

Rather than say these were completely false headlines, it's probably best to say that the stories under the sensational headlines are half-truths.

Imagine yourself as a worried relative of a Titanic passenger and you have just read in one edition of the newspaper that no lives were lost and that "all" of the passengers were picked up by the Carpathia and two other ships. 

These detailed false reports most likely reinforced a sense of comfort and calm felt among the families of the survivors.

Excerpts from the above newspaper article:

Published on Monday afternoon, April 15:  "The Canadian Government marine agency here received a wireless dispatch at 3:15 pm stating that the Titanic is sinking."  

• False. Titanic had completely sunk by 2:20 am on Monday, April 15, 1912.

Published on Monday afternoon April 15:  Passengers were being transferred to the Carpathia.  By early afternoon, all passengers had been received. 

• This was false. The passengers were completely transferred by 8:30 am. 

• The Timeline was: Carpathia took four hours just to get to the Titanic site, arriving an hour and a half after Titanic sunk - at around 4 am on Monday morning, April 15, 1912.  For the next four and a half hours (up to about 8:30 am), the Carpathia received 705 survivors from Titanic's lifeboats.

Published on Monday afternoon:  The Titanic was towed by the Virginian and other vessels toward Halifax.

• This was false, of course. The Titanic sank. There was nothing left to tow.

Families waiting outside White Star Line's
offices for news of survivors

The worst report was one that came directly from the White Star Line offices in New York.  Hundreds of families waited outside to hear something from White Star.  

Rumor had it that a list of survivors was going to be made available.  But when White Star Line opened their doors to address those who were  waiting, they told them that everyone had survived and would arrive in New York by Friday.

• What White Star Line said was mostly false until the last sentence which became true when Carpathia arrived in New York. White Star Line told the waiting families what they themselves had read in newspapers, that everyone had survived. That's because on Monday, most of the day had passed without hearing any news at all.  The one news report that White Star Line chose to believe happened to be a false headline.

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